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Sir Walter Scott in the Pacific Northwest

During the winter of 1839/1840 fur trapper Osborne Russell and
three companions whiled away the tedium of a mild winter camped
in a skin lodge outside Fort Hall in southeastern Idaho by reading.
"We had some few books to read, such as Byron, Shakespeare
and Scott's works, the Bible and Clark's Commentary on it, and
other small works on geology, chemistry and philosophy."
The description of their activities during that winter suggests
a more placid lifestyle than the rip-roaring, hell-raising, gun-shooting,
liquor-guzzling life we have so long associated with the lives
of the trappers. That view might be the result of the preponderance
of tales of missionaries as opposed to tales of fur trappers.

Russell might not have been your average fur trapper, but he was
probably not all that exceptional. He is reported to have had
very little schooling and to have run away from home to go to
sea at age sixteen. Instead he spent nine years trapping furs
before moving on to Oregon and becoming a solid citizen, a judge,
and a pioneer. California's gold beckoned him south and he died
there after suffering business reverses.

Fur trappers were not always well schooled, even though they might
have, like Russell, become readers; but fur traders and factors
were managers and businessmen. John Tod, fur trader at Fort McLeod
in interior British Columbia, reported that his 1825 summer was
spent in "books, music..." (he played both fiddle and
flute) "...and hunting." By 1836, the Hudson's Bay Company
station at Fort Vancouver had a small circulating library that
was filled with books brought from London with other supplies
or purchased from American trading vessels.

Archival records show that there were at least twelve volumes
at Fort Simpson in 1839: The Spectator, The Athenaeum,
Companion to Newspapers, three volumes of Wallace's Life
of George VI, five volumes of Blackford's Italy, and
three volumes of Life of Galt.

The missionaries to the Northwest also brought books with them,
many of a religious nature but also a quantity of secular works
useful for life in the wilderness. The Columbia Mission Library
kept by Dr. Whitman for the Congregational missionaries in the
interior contained many medical books; it was in place in 1838.
Whitman's eastern trip in 1842 resulted in another library being
formed nearby. Whitman carried with him his neighbor's order for
about $100 in books. But it was not until 1845 that HBC Clerk
Archibald McKinley received his shipment of books from Boston;
books selected by missionary David Greene.

Another fur trader to receive a large batch of books at one time
was J. G. King, HBC agent at Fort Umpqua in southern Oregon. Unlike
McKinley who just ordered $100 worth of books -- any books; King
specified the titles and authors he desired. As a consequence
the religious element was not quite as strong. The literary component
included a nine volume edition of Sir Walter Scott's works as
well as some Dickens, Byron and Thackeray.

It is clear that among the earliest American and Europeans in
the Oregon Country we had readers and we had books; and among
the books they read were the works of Sir Walter Scott. A hundred
years later, in similar circumstances -- isolation, loneliness
and fatigue -- a young man sat reading Lockhart's Life of Scott
by lantern light in an isolated camp at the summit of one of the
Cascades. This was Earl Larrison's introduction to Sir Walter
Scott, an introduction he followed by reading and then acquiring
everything by or about Scott which was available.

If we can accept the idea that some among the harsh frontier life
of the mountain men, fur traders and missionaries found respite
from their daily labors or their weather-enforced boredom by reading
the novels of the era's most popular writer (although the center
of that popularity was half a world away) then it is easier to
accept the young scientist whose literary upbringing by-passed
Sir Walter Scott and who rediscovered that author under suspiciously
similar circumstances? Can we expect the young zoologist to become
a Professor at the University of Idaho and, in 1962, donate his
large and growing collection of Scottiana to the University Library
through the Library Associates. And, can you see what the answer
must be when they ask "Why is there a Sir Walter Scott Collection
at the University of Idaho?"